population migration
Disasters make 14 million people homeless each year.
About 14 million people are being made homeless on average each year as a result of sudden disasters such as floods and storms, new figures show.
Eight of the ten countries with the highest levels of displacement and housing loss are in South and Southeast Asia
By Adela Suliman
LONDON, Oct 12 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - About 14 million people are being made homeless on average each year as a result of sudden disasters such as floods and storms, new figures show.
The risk of displacement could rise as populations swell and the impacts of climate change become more severe, said a report issued on Friday by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
Earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and tropical cyclones are the main disasters forecast to uproot large numbers of people, with countries in Asia, home to 60 percent of the world's population, hit particularly hard, according to modelling by the agencies.
Eight of the ten countries with the highest levels of displacement and housing loss are in South and Southeast Asia.
They include India, where an average of 2.3 million people are forced to leave their homes annually, and China with 1.3 million people uprooted each year, found the report, released on the International Day for Disaster Reduction.
The numbers exclude those evacuated ahead of a threat, and people displaced by drought or rising seas.
Russia and the United States also feature as countries where disasters could cause large-scale homelessness, unless significant progress is made on managing disaster risk, the study said.
"The findings underline the challenge we have to reduce the numbers of people affected by disasters," said Robert Glasser, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative for disaster risk reduction.
"Apart from death or severe injury in a disaster event, there is no more crushing blow than the loss of the family home," he added in a statement.
The most devastating floods to hit South Asia in a decade killed more than 1,400 people this year, and focused attention on poor planning for disasters, as authorities struggled to assist millions of destitute survivors.
Refugees and people uprooted in their own countries are already at record-high numbers, said IDMC director Alexandra Bilak. The new model goes some way towards predicting the risk of disaster-related displacement, which is an "urgent, global priority", she noted.
It is also intended to help urban planners in hazard-prone towns and cities who must consider the safety and durability of built-up areas and the threats to millions living there. Justin Ginnetti, head of data and analysis at the IDMC, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation there was a strong correlation between the risk of being uprooted by a disaster and residing in a rapidly urbanising location.
With the poor often living on the outskirts of cities, on flood plains or along river banks, Ginnetti said better urban planning could make them less vulnerable.
He contrasted Japan and the Philippines, which have roughly the same number of people exposed to cyclones. Japan builds more robust housing and so faces far less displacement in a disaster than the Philippines, where homes are less able to withstand shocks, he said.
"We don't want people to think of disaster displacement as some kind of inevitable act of God - this is not (a) necessary outcome every time there's heavy rainfall," he said.
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Yolanda Sun
Analysis: Why we must talk about population.
Reading David Roberts’ recent explanation of why he never writes on overpopulation, I felt compelled to reply.
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A Response to David Roberts’ Self-Censorship on Overpopulation
Reading David Roberts’ recent explanation of why he never writes on overpopulation, I felt compelled to reply. While Roberts made a set of superficially convincing arguments, ultimately he’s wrong not to focus directly on the population pressures we’re facing. Not confronting population head-on is like looking out the window of a plane and realizing you’re about to crash but refusing to tell the other passengers about the impending crash. Instead you spend your remaining moments convincing people that it’s “empowering” to wear their seat belts. That it’s a good for their health to put their laptops away and hold their head between their legs. Sure, you’ll convince some—and those you do convince might be better off—but you’ll convince far fewer as the sense of urgency is gone.
Reducing the global population is essential in addressing humanity’s impact on the planet—along with reducing overall consumption (affluence) and the use of unsustainable technologies (all variables in the I = PAT equation). And after the missteps of the Sierra Club and some governments, Roberts can be excused for why he feels it may be smarter to simply address the P in the equation indirectly by focusing on women empowerment and providing good access to family planning (and I would add providing comprehensive sexuality education to all children, as Mona Kaidbey and Robert Engelman and discuss in EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet). But that won’t be enough.
Stabilizing population is urgent. The goal should not simply be to nudge along a little less growth so population stabilizes at 9 billion rather than 9.5 or 10 billion. Instead, we need to make a long term plan to get population back to a manageable range. How far to scale population back, as noted 10 years ago by Roberts in another essay on why he doesn’t talk about population, “is up for debate, but probably a lot.” Some, including Paul Ehrlich, have suggested the ideal population range is around 1-3 billion, depending on how badly we have damaged the Earth’s systems and how much we want to consume moving forward. If Roberts is serious when he says he wants poor countries to be less poor “than their forebearers” then that means the Affluence variable in the I = PAT equation will increase. Yes, affluence elsewhere must shrink in accordance (and I wholeheartedly agree that wealth inequities need to be grappled with as does consumerism more broadly), but our population—particularly the 2-3 billion of us in the global consumer class—is completely overwhelming Earth’s systems.
One-Planet Living
In Is Sustainability Still Possible?, Jennie Moore and William Rees explored what a one-planet lifestyle would look like (in a world with 7 billion not 9.5 billion) and their analysis shows that if we lived within Earth’s limits, gone would be the days of driving personal vehicles, flying, eating meat, living in large homes, and essentially the entire consumer society that we know today. Frankly, that’s fine with me, considering the ecological, social and health costs of modern society—but most will not accept that. And considering that—and that policymakers and economists and even most environmentalists still believe further economic growth is possible and even beneficial—it’s increasingly hard to imagine any scenario other than a horrifying ecological collapse in our future.
That is another reason why we should prioritize population degrowth. Every million people not born is a million not to die when climate change brings about terrible flooding, droughts, disasters and famines it will in the increasingly near future. And please don’t take this to the absurd extreme that, ‘well, let’s just stop reproducing altogether and then there’ll be no suffering.’ I’m not saying people should have no children at all (here’s another Tucker Carlson video for you to enjoy, this one with the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement). But people should have far fewer—particularly in overdeveloped countries like the United States. I personally chose to have one child, even though both my wife and I would like to have a second. But I deemed it morally irresponsible, or in the words of bioethicist Travis Rieder probably not ‘honorable’ to have a second, particularly knowing what’s in store for our kids in the coming century, and knowing that by living in the United States, I am a ravenous consumer no matter how hard I try to be otherwise.
Historical Efforts
Roberts also selectively focuses on history to better make his point—providing examples of the Sierra Club brouhaha but not the work of all the population organizations that helped shift population trends in a positive direction. And while there have certainly been tragic missteps—such as India’s efforts at forced sterilization—there have been unqualified successes. In his book Countdown, Alan Weissman describes the amazing case study of Iran, which through a focused campaign, reduced population growth dramatically. Yes, the primary tactics were to provide free family planning and education, which I don’t think anyone will disagree are very smart tactics, but the government was clear in its goal and the urgency—and also supplemented its efforts with social marketing to create a smaller “normal” family size, including advertisements on TV, banners, and billboards that “One is good. Two is enough.” Similar successes can be seen in the efforts of the Population Media Center that uses soap operas to shift norms around population size.
While I don’t know if the numbers were or could ever be estimated, efforts like Iran’s and PMC’s, like Stephanie Mills committing so publicly to never have children at the height of her reproductive years, and Paul Ehrlich capturing the public’s attention with his warnings about the population bomb, all of this helped focus our collective attention on population issues in the 1960’s and 70’s and helped slow population growth.
Ultimately, Ehrlich, with as much criticism as he receives, was not wrong about the population bomb. His warnings and the efforts they helped trigger—along with the Green Revolution—allowed us to extend the fuse. But in all those years, the fissile material has also been building, and when the bomb finally explodes, the shockwaves will be felt around the world. In fact, even Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution warned, “Unless progress with agricultural yields remains very strong,” which Borlaug noted cannot continue indefinitely unless we cut down our forests, which he implored us not to do, “the next century will experience sheer human misery that, on a numerical scale, will exceed the worst of everything that has come before.”
Immigration
As for immigrants—sure it probably wasn’t the best idea for Professor Phil Cafaro to go on Tucker Carlson’s show to support anti-immigrant sentiments, but Cafaro’s point is valid, even if uncomfortable and confusing for progressives. Until America has a one-planet footprint, all new immigrants are going to increase global impacts because they’ll consume more in the US than in their home countries. (This even suggests all adoption ideally should be domestic, which is a-whole-nother can of worms!)
That’s not to say we should ban immigration or foreign adoption, but it means we should have a clear plan around immigration (along with one on reducing American consumption) and we should offset immigration by reductions in births of Americans (easier done if we have a population goal in mind for the United States). This offset is essentially what’s happening in European countries that have smaller than replacement rate birthrates—but the problem there is that this cultivates anti-immigrant sentiments as white European populations suddenly darken. With America at least, we have always been an immigrant nation so theoretically we could adapt, though obviously the current administration and its supporters are fomenting the same fears and biases that Americans have shown since its early days, as waves of immigrants from Ireland, Southern Europe, China, and Mexico started arriving.
Setting Goals
Is it so scary or morally fraught to start advocating for a smaller global population—or at the very least start talking openly about population challenges? Is it impossible to imagine nurturing a one-child family size norm in the US and Europe (where each child’s impact is many times greater than a child’s in a developing country)? One is good. Two is enough. Three is too many.
As Roberts notes, momentum is already bringing us toward smaller family sizes—but that same momentum is also bringing us toward higher consumption rates. Some smart social marketing and celebrity modeling could bring us toward population reductions quicker. Breaking the myth that sole children are spoiled and lonely—as Bill McKibben did in his great book Maybe One—would be a good place to start. As would showing the economic and environmental benefits of having one child. And so would making it cool to have one child. Perhaps that’s the marketing slogan we use: “It’s Hip to Have One.”
And let developing countries shape their own population targets so as to avoid the obvious criticisms of imperialism (maybe it’s even time for a Framework Convention on Population Growth to go along with the Framework Convention on Climate Change—so all countries can feel ownership in this effort). But clearly, population stabilization is as important in developing countries—not because of the immediate effects on human impact (I), but because as Earth systems finally break down after the decades of abuse we’ve delivered, people are going to retreat from their flooding towns, their drought stricken lands, their war-torn regions, and they’re going to have to go somewhere. And then the right-wing extremists will say “we told you so,” waving their copies of Camp of Saints in their hands as they do, and be perfectly poised to take over more government institutions—and that may be the population crisis’ scariest outcome of all.
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The National Guard
Puerto Ricans could be newest US 'climate refugees.'
Hurricane Maria's destruction on Puerto Rico could spawn one of the largest mass migration events in the United States' recent history, experts say, as tens of thousands of storm victims flee the island territory to rebuild their lives on the U.S. mainland.
Hurricane Maria's destruction on Puerto Rico could spawn one of the largest mass migration events in the United States' recent history, experts say, as tens of thousands of storm victims flee the island territory to rebuild their lives on the U.S. mainland.
The displaced islanders, thousands of whom were awaiting flights yesterday from San Juan's Luis Muñoz Marín airport, might be among the nation's newest "climate refugees," a demographic that includes former residents of southernmost Louisiana and the shrinking islands of Alaska's Bering Strait.
"It could potentially be a very large migration to the continental United States," said Maria Cristina Garcia, a Cornell University historian, immigration expert, and author on large-scale population shifts, which includes a forthcoming book on climate refugees.
"Whether that migration will be permanent or temporary is still anyone's guess," Garcia added. "Much depends on the relief package that Congress negotiates."
While the Trump administration has said it will take weeks to complete a comprehensive damage assessment for Puerto Rico, early estimates suggest that an effective response for the commonwealth and the U.S. Virgin Islands would be on par with what it will cost to rebuild from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.
Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, speaking Tuesday on MSNBC, said the islands' fate is dependent upon the federal government's willingness to mount a massive relief effort.
"If we have that, we can avoid a humanitarian crisis in the United States. But if we don't have that, you will see thousands if not millions of Puerto Ricans flocking to the United States, which will cause a demographic severe problem in Puerto Rico as well as in the United States," Rosselló said.
The extent of both government and private-sector spending will also depend on how much of Puerto Rico can be rebuilt, and whether some areas — such as the capital, San Juan — should be given priority while more rural areas are left to be rebuilt using local resources.
Once a pull to mainland, now a push from home
Another major question facing places like Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which took a direct hit from Irma, is how to rebuild in a way that provides greater resilience against future storms. Scientists say climate change is making hurricanes more intense and more destructive.
"These are societies that have dealt with storms for centuries, so they're not going to simply give up," Garcia said. "In some cases, [climate resilience] may have to include moving away from the coastlines."
Of course, Puerto Rico — unlike "climate refugee" communities such as Isle de Jean Charles, La., or Shishmaref, Alaska — is not literally being swallowed by the sea. Nor will it be permanently denuded, since many of its roughly 3.4 million residents will stay and rebuild, regardless of government support.
But experts say Maria will trigger profound demographic changes for Puerto Rico, which has already witnessed an outmigration of roughly a half-million people over the past decade. Many of these are college graduates and young professionals who find better job prospects in cities like Miami, New York, Chicago or Orlando, Fla., than they could ever imagine in San Juan or Ponce.
Now, however, the pull of the U.S. mainland's big cities has been eclipsed by the push of Puerto Rico's plunge into sudden darkness, fear and chaos.
"Some people know that the conditions on the ground are so harsh that their families are not going to be able to stay," said Edwin Meléndez, a professor of urban affairs and planning at Hunter College in New York City and director of the school's Center for Puerto Rican Studies.
Meléndez said he has heard stories of Puerto Ricans in New York purchasing plane tickets not to visit home but to aid in the evacuation of family members if conditions continue to deteriorate.
"They say, 'We're going to go down there, see how they're doing, and if we need to bring them back, we'll bring them back,'" he said. "In the last several days, people have become increasingly worried about the frail and the elderly back home, about parents and grandparents."
Meléndez projected that Maria's damage to Puerto Rico's physical, social and economic fabric could result in as many as 200,000 migrants to the U.S. mainland over the next 12 months, with many of the new arrivals relocating to Florida, New York and New Jersey — all of which have existing large Puerto Rican communities.
Migration 'rumors'
In Washington, most lawmakers have not turned their attention to a potential mass relocation of Puerto Ricans to the U.S. mainland.
Many are, however, questioning the Trump administration's recovery efforts, including its hesitation to waive a 1920 law that allows only American ships to travel between U.S. ports.
The Trump administration is also trying to hold off congressional trips to Puerto Rico while recovery efforts continue, even as Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, an Illinois Democrat born in the island territory, said he plans to visit on Friday.
Gutiérrez's spokesman said he had heard nothing concrete about mainland cities and states preparing for an influx of migrants, but only "rumors."
Other Puerto Rico-born lawmakers, like Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.), have spent the past week emphasizing Puerto Rico's bond with the United States — and the responsibility that entails.
"New York and Puerto Rico are inextricably linked. For New Yorkers, Puerto Ricans are family — for some figuratively and, for many of us, literally," she said in a statement.
"Puerto Ricans are Americans," she said. "They have fought in nearly every major conflict, shedding blood and sacrificing their lives for the rest of us. We cannot and will not turn our backs on them."
Twitter: @dcusickmpls Email: dcusick@eenews.net
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Do more to help poor nations cope with climate change, IMF tells rich countries.
The International Monetary Fund has told rich countries they must do more to help poor nations cope with climate change or suffer from the weaker global growth and higher migration flows that will inevitably result.
The International Monetary Fund has told rich countries they must do more to help poor nations cope with climate change or suffer from the weaker global growth and higher migration flows that will inevitably result.
In a chapter released ahead of the publication of next month’s World Economic Outlook, the Washington-based IMF said low-income countries had contributed little to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and could not afford to tackle the problem from their own meagre resources.
“Rising temperatures would have vastly unequal effects across the world, with the brunt of adverse consequences borne by those who can least afford it,” the IMF said.
“The international community will have a key role to play in fostering and coordinating financial and other types of support for affected low-income countries. With advanced and emerging market economies contributing the lion’s share to the warming that has occurred so far and is projected to continue, helping low-income countries cope with its consequences is a humanitarian imperative and sound global economic policy.”
Using conservative assumptions, the IMF said that by 2100 income per head in a typical low-income country would be 9% lower than it would be in the absence of temperature increases. It added that the present value of these losses would amount to the loss of an entire year of current economic output for a poor nation.
The adverse impact of climate change would be long-lasting and would be felt through lower agricultural output, reduced productivity in sectors exposed to the weather, weaker investment and poor health. Higher temperatures constrained growth in the hot regions of emerging and developing economies significantly more than in hot regions of rich nations, underlying the importance of development in reducing vulnerability, the IMF said.
The chapter noted that low-income countries had “huge spending needs and scarce resources to undertake the investments necessary to cope with climate change.” The United Nations has agreed a set of sustainable development goals to be met by 2030, but achieving them would require poor countries to increase public spending by up to 30% of gross domestic product. This would not be possible for most countries, the IMF said.
“Moreover, domestic policies alone cannot fully insulate low-income countries from the consequences of climate change as higher temperatures push the biophysical limits of these countries’ ecosystems, potentially triggering more frequent epidemics, famines, and other natural disasters, at the same time fuelling migration pressure and conflict risk,” the chapter said.
It warned that “substantial migration flows, potentially spilling across country borders, could arise if climate change leads to a significant rise in sea levels.” On current global warming projections, hundreds of millions of people in low-lying areas could become vulnerable to flooding, forcing them to abandon their homes.
The international spillovers from the most vulnerable countries, through depressed economic activity and potentially higher conflict and migration flows, could be considerable, the IMF said. “Going forward, only a global effort to contain carbon emissions to levels consistent with an acceptable increase in temperature can limit the long-term risk of climate change.”
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Heat and drought drive south India's farmers from fields to cities.
"We used to easily be able to harvest three crops a year. Now we can barely harvest a single crop," says one farmer.
by Rina Chandran | @rinachandran
NAGAPATTINAM, India, Sept 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Vinod Kumar remembers a time, not so long ago, when the fields in his village in the southern state of Tamil Nadu were green all year round.
His family lived comfortably from its farmland of just over 2 acres (0.8 hectares), growing vegetables, coconuts and millet irrigated by the Cauvery river and the rain.
Kumar grew up believing the farm would be his life.
But today, the 30-year-old drives a car for a living in the city of Chennai, 250 km (155 miles) away. His family joined him two years ago, abandoning what had been for generations their home and their land.
On a recent journey back to the area where he grew up, he said he was far from the only migrant.
"At this time of year, these fields should be green with paddy shoots - but no one seems to be farming," said Kumar, as he drove past arid fields overgrown with scrub and thorns one sweltering July afternoon.
"We haven't had enough water for many years. It has become impossible to make a living from farming, and a lot of people have moved to cities to do other jobs."
Tamil Nadu endured its worst drought in more than a century after the monsoon rains failed last year - and the combination of lack of water and worsening heat is driving a gathering wave of migration.
In Nagapattinam, in the Cauvery river delta region of southeast India, drought and irregular rainfall have blighted lives for about a decade now.
As ponds and tanks dry up, causing crops to fail and cattle to languish, more people - like Kumar - are moving to cities.
TOO HOT TO SURVIVE?
The Asia-Pacific region, the most prone to natural disasters in the world and home to a fifth of the global population, is struggling with more frequent and intense disasters, from cyclones and droughts to floods and heatwaves.
By the turn of the century, much of South Asia could be too hot for people to survive, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Last year was India's warmest on record - and that increasing heat is contributing to worsening drought, water shortages and migration.
Millions are thought to have fled the severe drought of 2015-16, which the government said affected about 330 million people, or nearly a quarter of the population.
"Two-thirds of the country is in arid and semi-arid regions, so they are already susceptible to higher temperatures and less rainfall," said Suruchi Bhadwal, an associate director at research organisation The Energy and Resources Institute, based in New Delhi.
"Farming is climate-sensitive, and drought is a slow, insinuating event. A farmer will have lost everything by the time it is declared, and he is then forced to migrate," Bhadwal said.
SHRINKING HARVESTS
In coastal Nagapattinam, temperatures in May, the hottest and driest month, can go above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) - a level at which crop yields decline under the stress of extreme heat.
In the Cauvery basin, where Nagapattinam is located, the maximum temperature is forecast to rise by 3.7 degrees Celsius by 2080, while the minimum temperature is seen rising 4.2 degrees Celsius, according to research by the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.
That increase will cause grain yields to fall up to 40 percent, scientists say.
"We used to easily be able to harvest three crops a year. Now we can barely harvest a single crop," said C. Subramaniam, a farmers' leader in Vettaikaraniruppu village.
"Forget water for farming. We don't even have water for drinking," he said.
The amount of farmland available also is shrinking as salty sea water - which kills most plants - has surged inland, tainting the soil.
Nagapattinam was the Indian district hardest hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Today, where green paddies once stood, there are water-logged shrimp farms stretching to the horizon.
Erosion is also a problem, with the Cauvery delta having shrunk by a fifth over the past four decades, according to research by the Madras Institute of Development Studies.
Such losses are a major problem for a region known as India's "rice bowl".
LEAVING HOME
Tamil Nadu's problems with drought and water shortages are complicated by the already thin margin of survival for many farmers. Most work plots smaller than 2 hectares (4.9 acres).
A majority also do not own the land they cultivate, instead tilling the land as tenant farmers with no access to government loans or insurance plans that offer some protection.
To complicate matters, Tamil Nadu has been fighting a long-running dispute with neighbouring Karnataka state over sharing the Cauvery river water, which is a lifeline for farmers like Subramaniam.
Increasingly, only those who can afford to dig borehole wells are able to coax a living from the land. But even this is getting harder.
S. Murugan, who owns 20 acres of land in Karuvazhakarai village, installed a well five years ago, paying 150,000 rupees ($2,339) for it to be dug 100-feet (30-metres) deep.
Now, as the water table falls from overuse, he is only able to pump enough water to cultivate half his land. Lush green rice paddies lie on one side of the road, barren fields on the other.
"Today, you have to pay more, go 200-250 feet to hit water. Plus there are barely any men left here to work on the fields," he said.
His own son is studying in Chennai and unlikely to return to the land.
"He does not want to farm, and I am also not keen, even though we have always been a family of farmers," Murugan admits.
DROUGHT DEATHS
Farmers who cannot afford borewells have suffered much worse.
More than 200 farmers in Tamil Nadu died or killed themselves between last December and June this year because of distress related to the drought, according to state data.
Most belonged to Dalit and other lower-caste communities that do not own land, and had been unable to repay loans from private lenders.
Across the country, about 60 percent of India's population still depends on the land for its livelihood - a huge problem as climate change brings more weather extremes that make bringing in a harvest harder.
While agriculture made up more than two-thirds of a farm family's income in the 1980s, today it brings in less than a third, with many families seeking alternate sources of income.
But a lack of education for jobs beyond farming is keeping many people on the land, even as it no longer produces a harvest they can rely on.
"The farmer distress is the result of the long-standing neglect of the rural economy," said R. Murali of the rights group People's Union for Civil Liberties.
"People know nothing but farming, there are no other jobs, and they lack the education and skills for jobs in the city," he said.
Still, tens of millions of people - mostly young men - have moved to cities for work in the last decade, analysts estimate, leaving behind women and children and the elderly to eke out a living from the land.
The migrants themselves often end up in slums and informal settlements, with a quality of life not much superior to that on the farm.
SEWING A FUTURE?
Nagapattinam's young men - and increasingly its women - are migrating in growing numbers to the cities of Coimbatore and Tirupur to work in textile and apparel factories.
Others go to Chennai and Bengaluru as security guards or drivers.
Bala Murugan, 28, moved to the apparel hub of Tirupur to sew T-shirts years ago when his family could no longer earn enough from farming. He sends home about 5,000 rupees ($78) a month, he said.
His family, like hundreds of other low-caste families in the district, does not own any land of its own.
Murugan doesn't think he will ever return for good.
"I do not see a future here. We can no longer depend on the land like we used to," he said on a visit home, to a modest hut by the side of a dry irrigation ditch.
"My parents say this is the only work they know, so they will remain here," he added.
NOT ENOUGH HELP?
India's government operates a federal scheme to provide 100 days of work each year to one member of every rural family, in an effort to boost sagging incomes. But activists say the programme is inadequate to meet a rising need for help.
A state climate action plan, drafted in 2014, also outlines measures to boost sustainability, including the introduction of more drought- and flood-tolerant varieties of paddy rice and water-saving irrigation methods.
But too little has been implemented, in too few places, farmers complain.
Kumar, the farmer-turned-driver, however, has not given up.
He is taking lessons in organic farming, and hopes to one day return to his village and reclaim his family's land.
"It's only now that I realise how lucky we were in the village to have clean air and clean water and all that space," he said wistfully.
($1 = 64.1200 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Rina Chandran @rinachandran, Editing by Laurie Goering and Megan Rowling. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.)
This is part of our series 'Rising Heat' which explores the world’s unseen menace: rising temperatures.
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Claims that climate change fueled Syria's civil war questioned in new study.
Climate change was not a major factor in Syria's long-running civil war, contrary to previous claims that drought helped build tensions that grew violent, a study said on Thursday.
by Chris Arsenault | @chrisarsenaul
TORONTO, Sept 7 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Climate change was not a major factor in Syria's long-running civil war, contrary to previous claims that drought helped build tensions that grew violent, a study said on Thursday.
Severe drought pushed rural Syrians into cities where conflicts festered, but the lack of rainfall was not necessarily caused by human-induced climate change, said the study by European and U.S. researchers published in the journal 'Political Geography.'
Statements by such public voices as Britain's Prince Charles and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore have linked the violence in Syria with global warming, saying the 2006 drought played a key role in urban migration that helped spark the civil war.
"There is no sound evidence that global climate change was a factor in sparking the Syrian civil war," said University of Sussex Professor Jan Selby, one of the study's co-authors, in a statement.
"It is extraordinary that this claim has been so widely accepted when the scientific evidence is so thin."
Syria's civil war started in 2011. Since then an estimated 465,000 people have been killed, and about half of its 22 million residents have been forced to flee their homes.
In a 2015 interview, Prince Charles said there was "very good evidence" that a drought linked to climate change was "one of the major reasons for this horror in Syria."
Gore said last month that 1.5 million "climate refugees" were forced to move to cities from rural Syria, fueling the tensions.
The study said at most, 60,000 families were forced to migrate.
"Global climate change is a very real challenge and will undoubtedly have significant conflict and security consequences," Selby said, but analysts must avoid "exaggerated claims about the conflict implications."
"Overblown claims not based on rigorous science only risk fueling climate scepticism," he said.
(Reporting by Chris Arsenault @chrisarsenaul, Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst.
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Australia has 'golden opportunity' to help shape world refugee debate, says report.
Australia has a “golden opportunity” to help shape worldwide refugee protection for the 21st century, and to “pre-empt future shocks” of forced migration in the region, a new Lowy Institute paper argues.
Australia has a “golden opportunity” to help shape worldwide refugee protection for the 21st century, and to “pre-empt future shocks” of forced migration in the region, a new Lowy Institute paper argues.
The Asia-Pacific faces the possibility of massive forced migration, caused by conflict, climate change, or political upheaval, and it is in Australia’s national interests to contribute to and shape the emerging international compact on refugees, report author and Lowy fellow Dr Khalid Koser told the Guardian in Sydney.
“Australia is the key rich country in this part of the world, it’s one of the few parties to the refugees convention, but it should not be complacent.”
Acknowledging the ongoing controversies surrounding Australia’s hardline policies on boat-borne arrivals – in particular forcible boat turn-backs and indefinite offshore detention – Koser said current planning needed to consider migration flows over coming decades.
“At the moment things are good in Australia, there are certainly issues, but you’ve turned back the boats, you’ve got management of migration, you’ve got management of resettlement. However, if there are large environmental issues, if there’s a war in Papua New Guinea, if Isis takes root in in the Philippines, there could suddenly be large numbers of people trying to come to Australia, and it should be in your interest to make sure that the international refugee regime responds more effectively.”
Signs of future mass migrations are present already: the violent government oppression of the Rohingya ethnic minority in Myanmar’s Rakhine state has sent tens of thousands fleeing over that country’s borders; Isis-inspired fighters have defied Philippine government forces on the island of Mindanao for more than three months; and an Australian Senate inquiry has heard from defence chiefs that climate change-induced migration is one of the greatest security threats the country faces this century.
In September last year, all 193 members states of the United Nations unanimously adopted the New York Declaration, which committed countries to drafting two new “global compacts” to improve and strengthen international protection regimes for refugees and for migrants, and to more equally share responsibility for their protection.
The compacts are set to be presented to UN general assembly next year.
Critics have argued the compacts may end up a series of bland, unenforceable principles, but supporters say the new documents are a chance to reform and strengthen a global refugee regime that is failing to match demand for protection.
“The current system is just not working,” Koser said. “Half the world’s refugees are just stuck in protracted situations, with no solutions. That can’t be the right solution. The compacts could be an opportunity for some out-of-the-box thinking and to test these more difficult issues.”
Koser said he didn’t believe the refugee compact would be “transformative”, but told The Guardian there was an “unusual momentum” across governments, the private sector, and civil society, towards finding new solutions.
The 1951 Refugees Convention was written in the aftermath of World War II to address the massive displacement caused by that conflict. It has attracted significant criticism for being unwieldy and ill-suited to modern displacement, but there are few proponents to abandon it, for fear whatever might replace it would be weaker, not stronger.
There are currently more people forcibly displaced from their homes than at almost any time in history – more than 65 million, according to the latest UNHCR figures.
In discussion over a new global refugee compact, Australia could offer technical and financial advice to new resettlement countries, help create new pathways for refugees (such as community or private sponsorship), or help regional neighbours provide humanitarian assistance, the Lowy paper says.
Koser says Australia’s international reputation had been severely damaged by its adoption of hardline policies for boat-borne arrivals (while remaining a strong formal resettlement country), but the “stigma” around boat turnbacks and offshore detention had faded globally.
“There was a very strong stigma when this stuff started happening, the international community was aghast, that this good international citizen was doing something so obviously deplorable, was doing something so obviously trespassing on rights and legality.”
He said Australia’s hardline practices had become “normalised” in international opinion, or even, as countries faced growing migration flows, regarded with a “tacit approval”.
“Australia’s achieved what lots of countries would love to achieve. Europe would love to stop Syrians coming, cynically because they’re not wanted, more generously, because we don’t want them drowning in the Mediterranean, these are the arguments your government uses as well. You’ve managed to do it, we never could, for reasons of geography. You haven’t got the worst civil war in 50 years on your doorstep.”
The scale of Australia’s irregular migration, even at its height, was a fraction of that being experienced by Europe. Koser said the Australian model of dealing could not be exported elsewhere.
“I don’t think it can happen. There are legal, geographical, and historical specificities about Australia that means it might work. But success is very very subjective. I wouldn’t say that operation Sovereign Borders has been a success in many ways. It stopped the boats, and not much more.”
“I think it’s a model that’s specific to this country.”
Koser said much of the world’s global refugee debate was hampered by the political reality of “governments trapped in short-term democratic cycles”
“Your job is to get re-elected next year. I can’t convince you to wait for 20 years to get success, because you need to convince your electorate and convince your media by next year.”
He argued drafting a new global refugee compact could be “the opportunity to do some longer-term thinking”.
“Yes, there’s a current crisis that needs fixing, though I would put ‘crisis’ in inverted commas, but let’s also begin to think about what our systems need to look like in the future. And that’s about the challenges of climate change, the challenges of internal displacement … the challenges of endemic crises in places like sub-Saharan Africa.”
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